Alienated property. Fraud during execution only occurs when a given asset is sold after the registration of the attachment or if bad faith in the transaction is proven. With this understanding, the 8th Panel of the Superior Labor Court set aside the attachment of a property that was to settle labor credits owed to an employee.
The current owner, the party filing the objection in the execution proceedings, argued that at the time of the attachment the property had long since ceased to belong to the company involved. She stated that she bought the property through judicial alienation, in 2005, but the purchase and sale deed was only definitively issued in 2013, because the defendant company itself breached a contractual clause of the agreement entered into.
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To demonstrate the good faith in the purchase, the owner’s defense maintained that at the time of the deal there was no encumbrance on the property due to labor lawsuits. It also argued that her right to property was violated and that the defendant has proven other assets to secure the execution of the labor credits, with no insolvency existing.
The Regional Labor Court of the 9th Region (PR) had upheld the constriction, ordered by the execution court, since the acquisition occurred after the filing of the labor claim. For the court, it was incumbent upon the buyer to verify the existence of a claim against the company that could lead it to default.
Purchase of an alienated property
The rapporteur of the case at the TST, Justice Márcio Eurico Vitral Amaro, emphasized that the Superior Court of Justice (STJ), by means of Precedent 375, consolidated the understanding that the recognition of fraud against execution depends on the registration of the attachment of the alienated asset or on proof of the bad faith of the third-party acquirer.
Since there was no attachment registration issued by the Labor Justice when the asset was alienated and the bad faith of the acquirer was not proven, the rapporteur concluded that it would not be possible to presume that fraud against execution occurred, under penalty of affronting the right to property, ensured by Article 5, item XXII, of the Federal Constitution. The vote was followed unanimously.
Source: Conjur/ Press Office of the TST
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